Seven Songs, Six Petals, Thirty-Eight Pearls Minus One
by toaels
Summary: Tifa remembers. The sky would miss him.


"Seven Songs, Six Petals, Thirty-Eight Pearls Minus One"

Tifa remembers.

Cloud wasn't her only friend but she was his only friend. The irony had escaped her at the time. She'd never really stopped to consider how unfair it was.

It wasn't like she hadn't known, either. She had. She watched how mothers scurried away from Cloud's mother and whisper amongst themselves. Though she did not understand, she was aware of it. How other kids would not talk to him, how some boys would kick dirt over his carefully constructed sand castles and bring them tumbling apart. (He did not fight, then, just watched with those big blue eyes) It wasn't like their friendship, her easy acceptance and his guarded smile, was a secret, either. And also the irony of that had been lost to them at the time.

_Seven songs._

Before her mother died, in the short memory she had of her, she was always smiling. That wasn't true. Her mother – like any other mother – would have yelled and sighed and scolded too. Had she lived long enough, eventually Tifa might have remembered those as well. Her mother died three days after her eighth birthday, a strange sickness that made her hair brittle like sand. She had been too stunned to cry then. The tears came a day later, in waves. As time passed she forgot all the yelling, sighs, scolding. Only the smiling face remained.

When she lived, before she got too sick to get out of bed, Tifa's mother let Cloud into her house. Tifa knew that her father disapproved. He didn't say anything, though. He was a taciturn man. This was his way of expressing his faith in his wife. As young as she was, Tifa knew this almost by instinct. She felt, rather than saw, the disapproving gaze that sometimes lingered on the too-still glass of a blonde boy when he sat down at their table for dinner. Tifa's mother was always kind, only too kind. It was another way of accentuating his difference. Cloud was either avoided or pitied. Tifa didn't know why. All she knew was that it made her uncomfortable, the way the adults – and by their influence, the kids – would look at him like he wasn't one of them.

"It's 'cause I'm not." Cloud said, when she voiced this thought aloud. They were lying on the endless field of grass somewhere beneath the mountain, looking up at the sky. It was a gray day, like someone had spilled the wrong color watercolor that morning. Gray, instead of the usual light blue.

"Why?" Tifa asked. "You live here."

"Well, not always. We moved here." Cloud was making something with his hands. Tifa tried to watch his fingers moving in and out of the loops of the glass blades and a foxtail, a lean violet flower, but her neck hurt. She turned her head back to the sky.

"Yeah, but that was when you were really small. You live here now." She said stubbornly.

"I know I do." She could hear the silent laughter behind his soft voice. She briefly thought that he might have been mocking her, but couldn't gather enough energy to get angry. Tifa was happy right here, lying still as the occasional gray wind brushed her cheeks and the overgrown weeds tickled her bare arms and ankles. Well, almost.

"I don't know why daddy doesn't like you so much. I don't know why Neve Hanson bullies you." She tried again. She felt Cloud shift a little beside her. The grass blades sighed as another gush of wind brushed past them, and it sounded like Cloud was sighing instead. He was one year older than her. Sometimes it felt like more.

"I don't have a father." Cloud said.

"You can't not have a father, you just don't know him." Tifa said wisely. Cloud shrugged. The wind shifted. It blew against her hair.

"Same thing, here."

"Is that bad?" Tifa didn't understand. For a moment all she saw was dark brown locks of hair messy over her eyes. She tried to sweep them off.

"I guess." Cloud didn't sound too sad. "I guess that's why your father doesn't like me so much."

"Well. I don't think it's fair." Tifa said defiantly. She was still struggling with her hair, though, and some got into her mouth. There was a laughter as silent as the wind.

"You look funny. Like a tentacle monster."

"No, I don't." Tifa said, but she was laughing too. Eventually Cloud sat up and helped her brush the rest of her hair off. The wind was getting stronger. Tifa sat up too. She held her hair in a fist, wishing she'd brought a string to tie it with.

"Here," Cloud handed her a string made of nimble glass blades, a foxtail to weave it together, and a little violet flower along the edges.

"It's so pretty." Tifa said, eyes wide. She admired the things Cloud could do with his hands. There were so many. He could build the most complicated sand castles she'd seen. The first day they'd met – she was five, the orange leaves were falling from the trees because autumn had come. The sand castle he'd built looked like remnants of an Ancient ruin. Cloud could make the prettiest things with anything, with his hands. He wrote like printed pages of a book.

"Can you tie my hair?" Tifa said. Cloud took her hair in his hand, made a knot with the string he'd made. Tifa grinned. "Thanks. I'll wear it to school tomorrow."

Cloud frowned at that. Tifa knew what he was thinking.

"I won't tell anyone that you made it," she said, because Cloud preferred it that way. If she had her way she would be telling everybody.

"Good." Cloud nodded, finally allowing himself to smile.

"So why is Neve Hanson so mean to you?" The other day, he'd torn up Cloud's beautifully hand-written pages. Tifa was pretty sure that the teacher had seen it, but she hadn't done anything. Just passed by as if those were snow on the ground and not pieces of torn papers. Tifa had run to him, from across the hallway, but by the time she got there Neve was already gone and Cloud had already picked up the pieces. Gathered them thrown them into the bin.

"Because…" Cloud rolled his eyes. A drop of water, from the discolored sky, and it landed right beneath his eyes. Cloud blinked and it fell like teardrops. It was absurd, though. Cloud didn't cry. All the time she'd known him, she'd never seen him cry. "Because he's a cabbage-headed pig."

Tifa burst into an unexpected laughter. After a while Cloud joined her too. More raindrops started to fall and they got up to leave. Tifa's mother wouldn't like her getting around, wet. Especially when she was meant to be practicing piano, not sneaking around outside. She sighed as she fingered the string tied around her hair.

"I'm no good at music. I wish my mom would stop trying."

"I love the piano. I wish I had one." Cloud said, as an answer. It made Tifa kind of embarrassed, kind of guilty, but also warm. Sometimes Cloud stayed with her while she practiced. Sometimes his fingers played on the keys, white and black. Whenever they made a sound, he startled like he hadn't expected it. The sounds were always clearer when Cloud played.

"You can use mine, you know. Whenever you want." Tifa said. Cloud smiled. Tifa wanted more of that smile. "I'd give it to you already, but it's too big to take."

"Yeah, and my room is so small. It won't fit anyway." Cloud said. They were walking down the hill as raindrops started to come in longer strides, becoming rainfall.

"I'm supposed to be practicing right now." Tifa said, as if she had just remembered. Cloud raised his eyebrows.

"Come on, nobody will see us if we go through the window." She tugged Cloud along. "I'm learning a new song. It's called Song of Summer."

"Sounds nice." Cloud said. Tifa knew that he would sit with her on the piano stool, watch her fumble more than usual (she wasn't so bad when she was alone), and learn the song much faster than her. One day, he would play it and it would be pitch-perfect, just like that. Tifa would say that she never knew it was such a beautiful song.

"Race you to my window." Tifa said, and started running. Cloud took a moment to catch up with her words and started late. Wind and raindrops slashed against her face. She suddenly remembered the flowers in her hair. She was afraid that it might fall off, so she had to take it off and hold it tight in her hand.

Cloud learned the song, Song of Summer, and six other songs during Tifa's piano practices. But no more songs after that. When Tifa was eight her mother died, her father didn't make her practice piano anymore and the cover was closed, gathered dust. No more piano practices. Sometimes Cloud would stare at the white cloth over the brown, dusty piano, and Tifa would pretend not to have seen that look. The white cloth, it looked too much like a white sheet over her dead mother's face and she couldn't bear to take it off. She was afraid that she would find a face beneath it instead of a piano, cold and blue.

_Six Petals._

Cloud started fighting when he was eleven, when Tifa was ten. He was surprisingly good, too. Surprising for everyone else, but not for Tifa. She would have guessed as much. He was too small for his age, because he was always hungry even if Tifa tried to smuggle as much food from her house as possible. He looked so fragile, too. With his pretty eyes and too-white skin, even his freckles. The light golden hair that he wore in ponytail now. But he fought like a devil, and Tifa couldn't have told him to stop even if she wanted to. She always feared for him when he got into one of those fights, especially with seniors twice as big as him, but it was also true that she'd rather see him fight and bleed than sit quietly. The taunting grew into bullying over the time. Tifa couldn't really stop it, nobody could. The first time it grew into violence, though, Tifa was getting her lunch and she almost dropped the plate. It was one of Neve Hanson's loyal friends, who still remembered the time Cloud accidently snickered at the sight of Neve holding a cabbage. (the name had become a code between Cloud and Tifa) The boy was getting red in the face, and soon he was throwing a punch at Cloud, over Cloud. Because Cloud ducked out of the way. He was fast, like a little squirrel. By then the boy was furious and he'd just lost his face. His attacks grew more violent and fierce. Students were gathering to watch. It was a disconcerting sight, really, with a beefy red-haired boy throwing himself over and around a much smaller, skinny boy who might have been forged by glass. Cloud kept getting out of the way. The boy kept getting angry. The crowd cheered, yelled _Peter, what the hell are you waiting for, _and still no teachers came to stop the fight. Tifa started getting worried. She just watched, though, when she realized that Cloud was looking at her. He looked troubled, but not for the reason she would have thought. He was cornered now and Peter was grinning and huffing. He didn't look troubled by that, though. He frowned like a person considering a particularly condemning choice between a truth and a lie. Like he might cross a river and burn the bridge behind him.

Before Tifa could ask, even with her eyes, Cloud took a breath. Peter was right in front of him now. The punch was coming fast and there was nowhere else to back out anymore.

That was when Cloud hit him, square in the face and faster than the other boy's punch. Peter fell backwards, brought down chairs and a table and someone's lunch with him, and couldn't get up for minutes. Cloud won that fight, but it was the beginning of a string of other fights, and there were many. He managed to win most of them, though some of them were close and those he didn't left him with broken bones, bleeding cuts, and bruised eyes. For the next three years, there wasn't a time when he was without a band-aid or a bruise or sometimes even a cast. Tifa did most of the healing and patching up unless it was really bad because Cloud didn't have enough money to go to a doctor every time. Each time Tifa knew that she should be reprimanding him, telling him not to fight and hurt himself. She tried it a few times. It didn't work out so well, because Cloud would just grin and nod like he understood, and Tifa laughed too because they both knew he didn't. Most times Tifa told him that she was proud, that those bastards needed some lessons, that Neve Hanson's nose was too high anyway.

It was probably good that the villagers shunned Cloud's mother as much as the boy, because although they were angry, they never bothered to go to his mother and demand an apology or money. If they did, Tifa would have paid for it anyway. Her father was the town mayor. Maybe that was one of the reasons they left Cloud alone. They wouldn't have cried if he'd been beaten to death, but still. Tifa still felt guilty for her part in making the hatred worse, if it really was ugly hatred that were in people's minds. Five days after her eighth birthday, she had a fitful dream that convinced her, somehow, that her mother was waiting for her over the Nibel mountains. She had snuck out in her pajamas and started walking in complete darkness. Cloud, who lived just by the foot of the mountain, saw her and followed without Tifa noticing. The night was too thick and her head was too full of tears, she slipped, started tumbling down. If Cloud hadn't run out to catch her arm then, she might have been dead rather than a few fractured bones and an ugly cut on her forehead. The cut kept bleeding into her eyes and she cried, not sure of anything. Cloud held her and pulled her up slowly. Only the adults blamed the boy for getting Tifa up in the mountains in the first place. Tifa tried to tell them it wasn't true. Eventually her father believed her, but she didn't know if the rest of them did.

All the while Cloud didn't open his mouth. He didn't say anything, as though he knew that nothing that came out of his mouth would be heard, no one would believe him.

The guilt stayed with her since then, sat in the deepest corner of his mind that she'd reserved for Cloud. Sometimes she thought she forgot, but sometimes it broke out and bled. Like today, when a light knock at her window woke her from her shallow sleep. Tifa sat up quickly, shook the sleep off from her eyes. There was only one person who would be knocking her window in the middle of the night. The window was on the far side of the room. She got up and wrapped the blanket around herself. She didn't turn on the lights. It was January. The floor was startlingly cold on her bare feet. She walked in tiptoe to the window. When she peered out, she almost gasped as she met Cloud's eyes. They looked more blue than usual. His lips were, too, and he was dripping water all over. His hair fell flat and heavy across his forehead. There was a deep blue bruise over his right eyebrow. Tifa fumbled to unlock the window as quickly as she could.

"What happened? Why are you dripping wet?" She whispered as Cloud climbed easily into the room. A gush of wind came in with him and melted into the ground as Tifa shut the window behind him. Cloud looked miserably at the small puddle now forming beneath his feet.

"Sorry 'bout the carpet." He said.

"Don't worry about the carpet, idiot." Tifa said. She threw off her blanket and wrapped it around Cloud instead. Cloud shifted as if to protest, but Tifa shushed her.

"I'll get some towels and… and some dry clothes."

"I'm not gonna wear your clothes." Cloud made a face. Tifa knew he was joking, trying to make her worry less. It didn't work. She scowled at the mock innocence on his face.

"Not mine. I'm gonna steal some of my dad's clothes, you cabbagehead."

"An idiot _and _a cabbagehead. Great." Cloud rolled his eyes, but he held the blanket tighter together. He was rattling, like ice cubes were knocking together inside his skulls, although he was trying hard not to.

"Wait here," Tifa said and snuck out of the room.

When she came back with dad's old shirt (that he wouldn't miss terribly), clean towels and a warm cup of tea, Cloud was still standing on the exact same spot, like someone had pressed a _pause _button. The carpet beneath his feet was dark with water spots. Tifa waited until he'd warmed up some before she started asking.

"So, what happened?"

Cloud pretended to look busy with the towel as he rubbed off the water from his hair. It fell messily over his shoulders. Cloud had told her that he was letting it grow to see if that will make it stick up less. So far, it wasn't working so great. His hair still stuck out everywhere except for the part he tried to hold down in a ponytail.

"Cloud," Tifa sighed. Cloud finally finished with the towels and looked up through his fringe.

"Do you have a string?" He asked.

"I might, if you answer me."

"Alright. It's nothing. There. Where is it?"

Sometimes Cloud could be so annoying. Tifa knew, at some deep conscious level, that Cloud was acting this way on purpose because he didn't want her to worry. Which meant that it was something to worry about. She glared at him. Gave him the hair tie, though, because he did kind of look ridiculous like that.

"I, uh, fell." Cloud finally answered as he swept up his hair.

"You_ fell_?" Tifa narrowed her eyes.

"Yes. Into the river."

"It's January. In Nibelheim." Tifa said slowly. Cloud made an attempt at looking incredulous.

"I know, Tifa. I'm not an idiot. Although you seem to think…"

"I mean the river is frozen." Tifa interrupted. Cloud looked like he might laugh, for the completely wrong reason.

"Oh, yeah. It was. I fell… hard. The wind, knocked me off balance."

"Must have been a strong wind."

"Yeah. Must have been. A Hurricane, maybe." Cloud said with a straight face. Tifa tried not to laugh, especially when she was pretending to be annoyed that he won't tell her the truth, but it didn't work. She felt her face crumple in a laughter at the same time he twisted his lips in a grin.

"Did this… wind, _hurricane_, have a name?" She asked as she pulled out an emergency kit from under her bed. It wasn't a proper box, her old sock drawer stuffed full with whatever medicine and bandages she could sneak out from the cabinet. She beckoned Cloud closer to have a look at his bruise.

"It's a wind, Tifa. Winds don't have names." Cloud was still looking serious. Admittedly, he did it much better than her. Tifa just rolled her eyes. Cloud squatted down in front of her, in a shirt much too big for him and still wrapped in a blanket.

"Although," Cloud said while Tifa squeezed out some salve from a tube. "I broke its noise after that, so I don't think it'll be trying that again."

Tifa laughed out loud this time.

"So what were you… and the wind, fighting about?"

"Some stupid thing." Cloud shrugged. He winced as the cold salve touched the blue knot starting to swell.

"It's always stupid." Tifa said.

"It didn't want to believe that there were flowers that could blossom in winter." Cloud said.

Tifa paused and looked at Cloud. There were, white flowers with five petals that only grew in Nibelheim, but she couldn't believe boys would actually fight about something like that.

"I can't believe you would actually fight about something like that."

"He was looking for a reason." Cloud said indifferently. "He told me to prove it."

"Why'd you answer in the first place?"

"I dunno." Cloud said, but Tifa knew he did. She knew he was looking for it too. A reason to fight. Maybe not consciously, but still. She sighed. She couldn't blame him for feeling frustrated. Cloud usually managed to hide it well, but sometimes it slipped out in blood and inflamed in purple bruises.

"So did you? Prove it?" She asked instead.

"Oh yeah," Cloud said. He raised his eyebrows. "Unfortunately they grow too close to the river."

And then, as if he'd just remembered, he pulled something out of his pants pocket. It was a small notebook that he always carried around with him. Tifa had no idea what he wrote down in it, he wouldn't let her see. Now, though, it was completely soaked so she would never know. He didn't look too heartbroken about it. He flipped through the pages until he found something tucked between the right ones and held it out. It was a tiny white flower. It was the flower he got pushed in the river for.

"You picked a flower?" Tifa said. "While you were being pushed… knocked off balance?"

"After." Cloud said simply. "Look, this one has six petals."

At that, Tifa tore her gaze from Cloud's face and peered closer to the flower he was holding out. It really did. Another, a smaller petal had squeezed itself out, hanging dangerously on the edge, trying to fit it.

"Interesting. Why did you…"

"Because it has six petals." Cloud answered an unasked question and dropped the small flower on Tifa's palm.

After Cloud left, Tifa carefully put the flower between the pages of her piano sheet music book. She hadn't taken it out of the shelf in a long time. The dust flew everywhere when she pulled it out. She lay on a bare bed after that. The blanket Cloud had used was too wet still. She'd told Cloud that she had a spare, but she didn't. It was cold and she thought she might catch a cold tomorrow.

_Thirty-Eight Pearls Minus One._

Really, it was the white that blinded her. More than the shine, more than the complete roundness of the shape, the perfection that they told. The white, though, more than anything, was faultless to the point of shame.

If she was overjoyed by the unexpected gift from her father, if she showed it more than she would usually allow in herself, than it was because of this breathless white. Thirty-eight pearls strung together by a thin line, even that shined like it was glossed it silk, through the even heads of the pearls.

"This looks expensive." Tifa said. She carefully held the necklace to her neck. Her father looked at her with a silent smile. He had always been a quiet man, but he'd lost more words since her mother's death four years ago.

"Not too much. Anyway, you're thirteen now. Almost a lady." Her father told her. Tifa humphed lightly.

"I have been for more than half a year now."

"Yes, I know." He smiled. "You're graduating secondary school. You can wear this to the dance."

The big dance. Tifa's face fell a little at the thought of it, but she struggled to keep the smile pasted. Her father didn't notice.

The dance. Everybody was talking about it these days. It had been that way as long as Tifa could remember. Only this time, it was her year to attend it. Nibelheim was a quiet town. An event like this mattered to everyone, even if it was just a school dance. It was a good enough distraction from the bleak wind of Nibel winters that even wiped off the colors.

It wasn't that Tifa didn't look forward to it. She liked dancing, and the music, and the warmth and the laughter and the good food. It was just that Cloud wasn't going to be there. He'd been invited, because everybody in school was, but he wasn't going to go. Tifa knew it even before she'd asked.

"Why the hell would I go?" Cloud's pronunciation was a little distorted, because of the ice pack he was pressing upon his cheek. They were sitting in the nurse's room. The nurse was one of those that pitied, rather than hated. Cloud hated both kinds but at least the former didn't throw a punch. She'd gone out to get more ice. It was only Cloud and Tifa in the room.

"Because…" Tifa tried to find a good reason. It was hard, because there really was none. Except maybe one that she'd never say.

"See? Exactly. I'm just glad it's over." Cloud shrugged and winced when the bruised cheek scratched against the ice pack. Tifa winced with him.

"What do you mean over?" She asked.

"School. It's over. Since I'm not going to the dance… today's my last day."

Cloud's voice sounded so free when he said it, _my last day_, that Tifa hated to ask, but she did anyway.

"You're not gonna… what about high school?"

"It's not mandatory, is it? Then, no."

"Well, what are you gonna do, then?"

"I don't know." Cloud said vaguely. Tifa got the impression that he was avoiding something, a thought that was like a mine, but couldn't ask.

"Who was it this time?" She asked instead. Cloud made something like a snorting sound behind the ice pack.

"I'm not gonna tell _you_." He said, as if it was obvious. Tifa gave him an offended glare.

"Why not?"

"I don't know, remember Perry Bill?" Cloud rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, what about him? I just gave him a little…"

"Let me tell you from experience, your kicks hurt. A lot."

Tifa considered this. She _had _embarrassed him in front of a lot of people that day. But she'd been so mad. Perry Bill had called in his five older cousins (two of whom were preparing to join SOLDIER), and Cloud had come to her with broken fingers and ribs. And if that wasn't cowardly, she didn't know what was.

"So what? He was a mean bag of potatoes. He deserved it."

"I know, but…" Cloud seemed to be studying Tifa's face. He lowered his ice a little bit. His eyes were so blue, so piercing. "Don't do that again, Tifa."

"They're not gonna do anything to me." Tifa said, more quietly. Then she added, "don't worry about me." Because it was true that, as absurd it was, Cloud spent more time worrying about Tifa than about himself. As if she was the one who constantly had a bruise or a cut like decorations of a soldier.

"I'm not worried." Cloud said, just as softly. A silence settled between them.

Then she was staring at his profile, the lost expression on his face and the eyes that were seeing something beyond the gray painted walls. Maybe that was why she said it out loud. She wasn't going to. He looked so lost to this world, she felt like getting lost with him.

"It's just that my dad, he bought me a necklace. To wear to the dance. It… it's pretty."

"Hmm?" Cloud looked up. Tifa felt herself blush a little. It was stupid that she brought it up.

"Nothing." She muttered just as the nurse came in with more ice packs.

It wasn't like she didn't have any other friends beside Cloud. She did. Girl friends too, especially as she got older and the boys and girls started building their own kingdoms, started excluding the other. Tifa still spent a lot of her time with Cloud, though. And although her other friends didn't particularly try to be friends with Cloud, they were okay with him. They accepted their friendship, in such a way that Cloud's name never came up in their conversations. Tifa sometimes felt ashamed that the most they could do to accept him was pretend he didn't exist. She felt ashamed because she wasn't brave enough to change that. It was the same way with Cloud. Tifa never mentioned her other friends in front of him. It was like she had two separate lives. Two acts, with her as the main actress in both. They didn't clash because they never came together in the first place.

Not all he kids were content with pretending that Cloud didn't exist, though. Bored kids, looking for a taunt or a fight. As Cloud got too fierce for some of them to pick at, (not unless they were in groups of more than five) the taunt slowly moved on to Tifa, too. She was the mayor's daughter, though. Nobody really cared to spit at her face, but she knew what was going on behind her back sometimes. There was nothing she could do about it. She didn't care much as long as they stayed words.

Not always, though.

When she heard that her stolen necklace had been found, scattered everywhere in the field, she thought she might know who had done it. There was no proof, though, and she watched in bemusement as Perry Bill kindly told her how sorry he was that her necklace had been broken like that. _Who could have done such a thing? It was a piece of beauty. _

Tifa thought of Cloud's words and refrained from kicking him hard in the shins again. He ran away before she could, in any case.

The dance turned out to be okay, but no more than that. Johnny asked her to go with him and she didn't have a reason to turn him down. She wore the light blue dress that she only wore on special occasions. Cloud had seen it once or twice, told her it was the color of a waterfall. Which was also the color of his eyes, but she didn't tell him that.

The food was excellent and the musicians were brilliant, but the heels hurt her feet like blades and the waterfall blue looked horribly wrong next to Johnny's flaming red hair. Also, Cloud had asked her to meet at their usual spot, by the dry well, as soon as she was finished. The last reason was probably the one that made her most anxious. She got out as quickly as she could, ran through the woods until her abused feet couldn't take it anymore. She couldn't help a grin when her eyes collided with his, and he smiled back.

And the stars, the night, December in the air. SOLDIER and Sephiroth and unspoken dreams. The promise. Tifa felt hollow. Like her soul had suddenly left her to join the Milky Way up above. She tried to cover it with a smile, a joke, something. The thought of him leaving was terrifying. She thought of all the young men who left to join SOLDIER and never returned. But Cloud would be different, she desperately reasoned.

"All right, I promise."  
A shooting star shot across the sky. She wished it to be some kind of a sign, that someone high up there was listening to her. That she was not alone.

That Cloud wouldn't ever be alone.

"Oh, I almost forgot to ask," Cloud said, straightening up. Tifa swallowed the tears and faked a smile as best as she could.

"What?"

"How many pearls were in your necklace?"

"What?" Tifa asked again, momentarily thrown off. The tear momentarily forgotten. Cloud shrugged like it was the most natural question to ask.

"How many pearls in your necklace? Did you count them?"

"Yeah… thirty eight. Why?"

"Damn," Cloud muttered. He looked up at the sky and blinked. Tifa watched him like a dream. Cloud shoved a hand inside his pocket and took something out of it – _things_ – her pearls.

"I only found thirty seven. I guess the other one must have been swept by the wind… or something. Or maybe Perry Bill ate it." Cloud said as he took her hand and carefully poured the small glistening pearls inside her palms. Tifa watched. She thought she'd forgotten how to speak. It took a few tries.

"Thank you." She finally managed, without tears that would surely incriminate her. It was hard. Although she tried not to, she kept thinking about Cloud leaving. She would never be the same, she thought. Because his eyes were so blue. Because these pearls were so white. Every time she looked at the sky, the snow, the peak of the mountain she loved, she would think of him. Always.

"You're welcome," he said, and it was as if all the blue had slipped from the sky and seeped into his eyes, his smile, and the sky was left to remember – and to miss – for all of time. She would, too.


End file.
